Black Friday Hits $11B in Sales & Australia Bans Social Media for Kids Under 16

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, what are BRICS countries and why do they want to move off the U.S. dollar? Then Black Friday shopping numbers are in and it looks like we all needed a little retail therapy this year.

0:44It's Monday, December 2nd. Let's ride.

0:52We are so back. Welcome everyone to the best stretch of the year, that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas with all the lights, holiday markets, nutmeg smells, and music. And speaking of music, I just want to say good luck to everyone participating in Whamageddon. If you haven't heard of this, it's an annual challenge in which players try to avoid hearing last Christmas by Wham from December 1st, yesterday, through Christmas Eve. Toby, this seems impossible. It seems impossible, but let's get into some specifics. there is an official Whamageddon site and it lays out some rules you need to follow.

1:27The first two are just the objective of the game and then two, the time frame of the game as you mentioned, December 1st through the 24th. But the third rule is the most important. You are allowed to listen to covers and remixes so it only applies to the original version of Last Christmas by Wham. That will make you lose. And Neil, I know you have done some digging into the best covers of this song. What are some different versions people could listen to to get their last Christmas fix without losing the game. Yeah, to be honest, they don't hold a candle to the original. But if you need to listen to this song but still want to compete in the challenge, there are plenty of covers out there by Jimmy Eat World, Hilary Duff, Carly Rae Jepsen, and the cast of Glee.

2:09There's also one by Taylor Swift. Oh my gosh. I already lost this year's Ramageddon Challenge by just going to a department store. So definitely avoid the Nordstroms in the Macy's of the world if you want to win. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, how was the long weekend? Oh, you know, full of interesting side dishes, some family time, and some good dinner table conversations. Same here, but those dinner table convos can get a little dicey around this time of year. Luckily, I have a pretty finance-focused family, so a lot of our conversations revolved around the market. I'd love to hear a Howell family market breakdown.

2:43Honestly, it was mostly just, so is NVIDIA going to go up forever? But while I'm not the guy to give financial advice, I did recommend that they all check out Yahoo Finance. It's got way more information than I could ever dole out over a side of mashed potatoes. Plus, it has this awesome research tab where you can go deep on advanced charts or reports from experts. Talking about Yahoo Finance over Thanksgiving meals, now that is a company man right there. Hey, Yahoo is what I use, so I want the fam to be armed with the best data possible as well. That's just being considerate. If you want to be like Toby's family, which who wouldn't, head to Yahoo Finance.com today.

3:19Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less. Get Select Style Selections Vinyl Flooring for just$1.99 per square foot and have it installed before the festivities begin. Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe's. We help you save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability. Install by independent contractors. See associate for details. Contiguous U.S. only. Well, hope your long weekend was restful and not too stressful. Since we were off for a few days, we're going to move our headline roundup segment up to the top of the show and run down some of the stories you might have missed while you were off in a leftover-inspired food coma.

4:01Up first, Black Friday numbers are in, and air fryers, giant TVs, makeup kits, oh my. Shoppers did their best supermarket sweep impressions and loaded up their shopping carts at record pace this year. Online shopping on Black Friday set a new all-time high, reaching almost$11 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. And that's on top of the$6 billion consumers shelled out on Thanksgiving Day itself. The items that drove most of the spending were your usual suspects. Sales of jewelry were up 651 % compared to an average day earlier this fall, as shoppers took advantage of discounts. Appliance sales jumped 476%, while apparel and electronics were both up over 330%.

4:42A surprise winner was toys. Overall, toy sales were up 622 % as Harry Potter Lego sets, Wicked Plush dolls, and board games were flying off shelves. Whatever you decided to buy, you probably did buy it online. Online retail sales were up 15 % this year, according to MasterCard, compared to just a 0.7 % rise in in-store sales. So, Neil, this was always going to be a bit of an apprehensive time for retailers because a lot of consumers have shown themselves to be more price sensitive this year after months and months of high inflation. But clearly the discounts were tasty enough to drive some pretty gaudy numbers.

5:21Did you do any shopping this year? I did a little shopping. I bought a new backpack. I bought some sneakers because these are absolutely beat up. And then the most important thing, I walked into the Verizon store and I switched from Android to an iPhone. So those are the three big purchases that I made. And I wonder if anyone else saw this, but there was some interesting marketing this year. Some retailers decided to say that they decided to promote their sales ahead of tariffs. We know that President Trump floated tariffs on literally every good coming into this country and higher ones on Chinese goods, which many Christmas and holiday gifts are.

6:02A few companies said you better lock in your prices now, and they called it a pre-tariff sale. Now, I think that is walking a bit of a tightrope to see how consumers would respond to that. But that was a new added flavor this year for people's holiday shopping. Right. It was certainly a psychological marketing tactic. Like, hey, prices are going to get even more expensive down the line, so let's bring them forward. I do want to talk about how in-store traffic did because foot traffic actually fell on Black Friday 3.2 % year over year. but a lot of it was due to some regional aberrations because there was, as we mentioned right before we left, some pretty bad weather over this Thanksgiving weekend.

6:43The Midwest had the sharpest decline because they also had really, really cold weather, very wintry weather. Northeast also had some adverse conditions. So whenever you do look at Black Friday sales numbers, you have to zoom out and say like, hey, there's a lot more other factors involved here rather than just consumers' appetite for spending. Stuff like weather does affect foot traffic, So that's maybe why we saw a little bit of an impact on shoppers' decisions to venture out and go shop in stores while we saw that 15, 16 percent rise in actual online shopping. Moving on, Australia made history on Friday, becoming the first country in the world to ban social media for children under 16.

7:21In passing the law, overwhelmingly, the Australian parliament wanted to send a message to online platforms and the rest of the world that it was serious about protecting kids from the harms they face while scrolling. One thing to know about this law, all the responsibility for enforcement rests on the platforms. If they fail to comply, they could be fined up to$32 million, while underage users and their parents will face no penalties. The ban doesn't go into effect for another 12 months, so in the interim, social media companies are going to be scrambling to create tools that block kids under 16 in Australia from accessing their platforms.

7:57But critics of the law say those efforts will be futile and kids will find a way to get around it if they want to go on social media. Toby, we've seen crackdowns on social media used for kids in the name of safety, but never something like this. Right. A lot of social media companies are pushing back on this, though, because they said the legislation was really rushed. It was introduced and then passed within a week. So even though there's 12 months for them to figure out how to actually enforce this, A lot of companies are in the dark and can't really explain how they're supposed to satisfy the requirements or how it will work in practice.

8:27The core focus of the legislation is pretty simple, though. Australia wants social media companies to take reasonable steps to identify and remove underage users from its platform. So the core idea is there. But the devil is going to be in the details here because companies have brought up things like VPNs and the fact that this will probably drive underage kids to fringe parts of the Internet, the dark web, whatever you want to call it, to access social media sites. So definitely a lot of pushback here, but a pretty bold statement from Australia. It is bold. I mean, certain parts of the United States have tried to move forward with legislation somewhat like this, not as strict.

9:03There was a law in the U.S. state of Utah, which was similar to Australia's. That was overturned by a federal judge who found it was unconstitutional. And then earlier this year, we talked about Florida. This is currently being challenged in the courts, but they want to ban social media for children under 14. So this one by Australia goes way above and beyond that. I don't know whether there is a legal challenge coming like it does in the United States, but this was certainly controversial. It faced pushback from mental health advocates too, who said, you're not looking at the more positive aspects of social media.

9:36There are marginalized kids out there who go to places on the internet, on social media platforms, as a means of finding community, and it can often help their mental health, while this law certainly focuses on the harms And there are many. So now, yeah. So in the next 12 months, social media companies are absolutely going to be scrambling to find ways to to block people under 16 from accessing their platforms. And and in Australia, going on social media now is kind of just like getting a driver's license or waiting to buy alcohol. There's a certain age limit and you have to wait until then to to go on social media like you would go buy booze at the corner store.

10:12And obviously there are ways around that and there might be ways around getting on social media underage as well. President-elect Donald Trump picked a fight with a new block of countries, this time going after the so-called BRICS nations, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, in a sense expanded to include other nations like Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia, and Argentina. Over the weekend, Trump threatened to impose 100 % tariffs on the group if they go ahead with trying to pursue using an alternative currency to the U.S. dollar. The threat comes after some BRICS members have shown interest in de-dollarizing the world economy.

10:50Namely, Vladimir Putin, who has called for the nations to create another option to the dollar earlier this year to prevent the U.S. from using it as a political weapon. So this is Trump taking a hard line stance, dissuading anyone from getting any ideas, Neil. Yeah, I mean, Putin does want to move away from the U.S. dollar because after he invaded Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. did certainly weaponize the ubiquity of the U.S. dollar to cut Russia off from the global financial system because the U.S. can just do that because the dollar is everywhere. And I think one particular story from that summit in October where Putin said that that way, everybody, BRICS countries here, we should move away from the dollar.

11:32The problem is they told all attendees coming that they couldn't to bring cash, to bring USD or euros because they're non-Russian credit cards that operated on Visa or MasterCard networks would not work in Russia because the U.S. had cut them off. So I think that's a sign of the, you know, just how much the global financial system is underpinned by the U.S. dollar. And it has been very difficult to move away from that ever since World War II. At the end of World War II, the U.S. dollar has dominated trading everywhere in the world. And it will be hard, even if they wanted to, even despite these tariffs, to move away from the dollar.

12:09But zooming out here, this is another example of Trump's very America first agenda. And he wants to recalibrate the global trade systems to reinforce U.S. economic hegemony sovereignty, whatever you want to call it. Because right now he is threatening to just completely uproot the global trade balance, saying 100 % tariffs on BRICS countries, which are this emerging economic force. So still trying to say like, hey, the U.S. is the boss here. We want to, you know, we're going to charge you 100 % tariffs, sharply drive up the cost of goods. if you do go ahead with this other plan. So it's just another America first kind of idea from Trump.

12:49For all my caffeine addicts out there, you're gonna wanna dust off the French press because buying a coffee every morning is about to get even more expensive. Last Wednesday, coffee futures surged to their highest level since 1977, 47 years ago, which could cause companies to raise prices. Futures for Arabica beans, the most popular and fancy kind, have climbed more than 70 % this year, while Robusta beans, the cheaper kind you'd find in instant coffee, have nearly doubled so far in 2024. And whenever you see spikes like these in commodities, it usually comes down to one thing, supply concerns.

13:24There's been really bad growing weather in Brazil and Vietnam, the two largest coffee producers, which is expected to reduce output. And a cascade of other macroeconomic and geopolitical factors have sparked an all-out bean grab by roasters that have push prices higher. Toby, what are you going to do without your morning cortado? Probably take up tea drinking at this rate because, yeah, it's been really bad weather in Brazil and Vietnam. Brazil suffered its worst drought in 70 years from August to September. And then ironically, they got these really heavy rains in October this year, which led to some more concerns that it will kind of reduce the flowering crop.

14:02Same thing in Vietnam. It had a drought, but then it also experience too much rain at harvest time. So that's one aspect. It is just weather. It's hard to grow when there's no water, and then it's hard to grow when there's too much water. And then also the other part of it is you mentioned another macroeconomic faster. There is this new EU law that is filtering down that aims to ban companies from growing crops on deforested land. That is a big question mark for these growers and these roasters who are buying the supply until they can figure out really the uncertainty around this new EU law. A lot of them are just ordering a bunch of beans right now because they are saying, we want to have beans when eventually this does come to pass.

14:43So it is just putting a ton of pressure on supply right now. And what does this mean for you, the consumer? Well, you should probably expect more, you know, pricier coffee. Nestle, which is the world's largest coffee seller, said it would raise prices earlier in November in response to the surge in coffee bean prices. And then another store to look at, obviously, is Starbucks. Starbucks buys 3 % of the world's coffee supply to send beans to its 40 ,000 cafes around the world. And Starbucks has done a lot less hedging against coffee price shocks this year. So it is more susceptible to volatility in the coffee bean market.

15:24And we're seeing hockey stick price growth in coffee beans. So I guess I don't have good news here. It looks like coffee is going to get more expensive. It's going to be a tea year. Finally, a little update on the crypto entrepreneur who brought the banana duct tape to a wall for$6.2 million last week. He ate it. Justin Sun, the 34-year-old crypto millionaire, called the art piece iconic and complimented the artist Maurizio Catalan. But then standing before a room full of journalists and media, peeled the banana off the wall and ate it like any other piece of fruit. But that is not where this story ends.

15:57The banana at the center of the conceptual art piece was bought by Catalan for 25 cents from a street vendor outside the Sotheby auction house where the bidding took place. Once the vendor named Shah Alam heard how much it sold for, he was a little bit peeved to say the least. Son, never one to let a headline opportunity slip away, decided to compensate Alam for his role in facilitating this sale by offering to buy 100 ,000 bananas from his fruit stand. Good for$25 ,000 worth of potassium product. So, Neil, should we go cash in our free banana? Oh, my God. This story is downright Dickensian. I mean, it is so dramatic when they go to this street vendor who makes$12 an hour, 12-hour shifts, standing in the elements.

16:43Buy a banana from him for 25 cents. Move it across the street into an auction house. tape it against the wall, and the value of that banana goes up from 25 cents to$6.2 million. I don't know. It's quite profound. It's maybe disturbing if you think of that. It might be thrilling if you are obsessed with the concept of abstract art. And then you have the dichotomy between the street vendor and Justin Sun, who's this crypto entrepreneur who can just throw around$6.2 million on a duct tape banana and then eat it in front of everybody in some sort of symbolism that I don't quite understand. But that dichotomy has really emerged since this banana was sold, and I just don't think we've heard the end of this story.

17:28Definitely not. The math doesn't really math. Even Sun's offer of buying 100 ,000 bananas, it doesn't give that much money to Alam. One, he doesn't own the streetcar. Most of that money would go to the owner. The New York Times did contact the owner of the vendor and said the owner said that he would share profits with Alam and some of the other people who manned the fruit stand. But the net profit from a purchase of 100 ,000 bananas comes out to be around$6 ,000 because, again, there's no money in selling bananas. It's 25 cents a pop. So even though potentially the sentiment was there, Sun isn't giving them that much financial reward if the entire profit on$100 ,000 comes out to$6 ,000.

18:09There have been some other GoFundMe efforts to say, hey, Alam, I know you participated in this history-making moment. Let's raise some money for you. And those have raised around$20 ,000. So potentially, if you do want to contribute to the Alam Fund, there is some GoFundMes out there if you want to go pursue those. Up next are winners of the long weekend.

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19:29Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I picked two things that went home with all the Thanksgiving leftovers. I defeated Toby in the Black Friday mall scavenger hunt, so I get to go first. And my winner is the stock market, which just closed out its best month of the year. The New York Stock Exchange was only open for a half day on Friday, but even in that short time frame, the markets continued their rise to make November truly one to remember. The Dow surged 7.5 % last month, and the S &P 500 and Nasdaq each gained at least 5%. The small cap Russell 2000 did even better, jumping more than 10 % in November.

20:07Crypto was also a big winner, with Bitcoin spiking more than 40 % over the month to its current price just below$100 ,000. It doesn't take Warren Buffett to figure out what's going on. The election happened in the first week of November, sparking what some call animal spirits in the market. Investors are excited about the prospect of pro-business anti-regulation policies from the incoming Trump administration, and they think stocks are going to benefit. Same goes for cryptocurrencies, where Trump is assembling the most pro-crypto government in U.S. history. All the while, investors are essentially shrugging off the threat of tariffs, believing Trump won't actually pull the trigger.

20:44Toby, how is your portfolio looking? I mean, it is frothy out there right now. The S &P 500 price-to-sales ratio is at almost a record high. If you zoom out the MSCI All Country World Index, which just is an index of all the stock exchanges out there in the world, America now makes up 66 % of that, which is an all-time high. So American dominance is just absolutely through the roof right now. It was a crazy month if you look back. I mean, one thing that I want to point to is MicroStrategy, which is the tech company that just started buying a lot of Bitcoin, selling more stock to buy more Bitcoin, becoming a Bitcoin holding company essentially.

21:20it had more trading volume than peak GameStop mania. And remember how manic it felt during GameStop. MicroStrategy absolutely topped that, and that is just one stock here. So the word I like to use is frothy because we are sitting at all-time highs, best months of the year so far, and it looks like there's no slowdown in sight. No, absolutely not. I mean, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, obviously, but there's a lot to like about the remaining part of the year for the market. December is historically the S &P 500's most consistent month of games with the greatest frequency of advances.

21:57And then the S &P 500 is up more than 26 % so far in 2024. Of the past 10 times, the S &P entered December up more than 20%. December itself recorded an average gain of 2.4%. So maybe that is past performance guarantee of future returns. And then this stretch from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving until the second trading day of the next year has historically also been very bullish. The S &P 500 has been up 80 % of the time during that stretch from right before Thanksgiving till right after the new year. So all signs are pointing, you know, up. That is up and to the right and also a little bit green.

22:38You asked how my portfolio is doing. It is green, Neil. My winner of the weekend is Moana 2 because for all the Wicked and Gladiator hype, it was Moana that had the best Thanksgiving weekend pulling in$220 million in domestic ticket sales. Together, Moe Wikiator combined to make this five-day Thanksgiving holiday period the biggest haul in cinematic history. As of yesterday, the box office had brought in about$420 million. Not bad for a struggling movie industry. Moana 2 really blew people out of the water, though. Some estimates had it making just$100 million on its opening weekend, but it more than doubled that, and it now sits atop the pegging order of the highest Thanksgiving weekend performances ever, beating out another Disney sequel, Frozen 2.

23:23Neil, it was a turducken of box office hauls. I mean, best Thanksgiving ever at the North American box office. And Milano 2 has a pretty interesting story about how it got to theaters because the first one opened in 2016. It opened to$82 million over that Thanksgiving weekend, which is certainly OK, but nothing nothing pathbreaking, nothing that would would signify what just happened this weekend. But it's got this amazing second life on streaming. Last year, it was the most streamed movie on any streaming platform anywhere in the United States. It's on probably Disney Plus, obviously. But people have rediscovered this movie and turned it into really a phenomenon to the point where it can have over$200 million in ticket sales over a single weekend.

24:12It was a five-day weekend. So the original Moana 2 was optioned for Disney Plus originally, but Disney thought they had some gold on their hands, and they were absolutely right. So that was a very smart decision to put it in the box office rather than put it on streaming. Yeah, it comes down to actually Bob Eicher. When he returned as chief executive, he wanted to recalibrate the balance between streaming releases and theatrical releases. So even though Moana 2 was originally slated for streaming, he said, or I don't know who said it, but under his watch, Moana 2 did make it to theaters. And some analysts said, whoever made that call, that was one of the best calls that Disney has made.

24:50And now we zoom out to Disney, Disney's year in the box office. They've low-key crushed it because Moana 2 is on pace to become their third billion-dollar movie this year in 2024. Inside Out 2 grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. Deadpool and Wolverine over a billion dollars. And now Moana 2 could be that next billion-dollar check in Disney's column. Have you seen any of these movies? I saw Deadpool and Wolverine. No, the ones from this weekend. Oh, no, I haven't seen any of them so far. You've got to get on that. I'm going to ask you again on Friday, and you better have seen two out of three.